“SERIOUS PROPOSITIONS.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19146, 14 April 1924, Page 6

“SERIOUS PROPOSITIONS.”

We see no reason to modify the view we have already expressed that a strike by the members of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants is bound to prove futile. Even if it were a strike that might be said to possess merits, the State must defeat it or else submit to the infliction of a serious and possibly paralysing blow upon its authority. But a railway strike is no longer calculated to embarrass the community in the way that was at one time possible. A complete railway strike would cause some public inconvenience, and be productive of a certain dislocation of communications. The resources of the State, however, are not so limited that the community is likely to be very seriously disturbed in mind by the prospect, which the secretary of the A.S.R.S. contemplates with apparent satisfaction, of "the whole country" being "out" at the end of this week. But Mr Mack is exaggerating. There are cooler heads in the branch of the railway servants that is more important than that which is content to have Mr Mack as its mouthpiece. Mr M'Arley, general secretary of the Locomotive, Engineers, Firemen, and Cleaners' Association, has reviewed the situation in terms that show a far better appreciation of the case than is indicated in the procedure which the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants has invited its members to adopt. Mr M'Arley is naturally sympathetic to the claims of the members of the latter organisation, but it may be gathered that he is averse from the dragging in of the locomotive men in support of a policy concerning which they were never consulted. "Strikes by Government employees," he says, "are serious propositions, and cannot be taken on lightly or on immature and one-sided consideration." The rebuke of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants that is implied in Mr M'Arley's condemnation of strikes that are lightlv or carelessly undertaken is nell deserved. A strike should never be resorted to in any industry except under extreme provocation and upon the failure of every other possible means of securing redress for grievances. In any circumstances, a strike is what Mr M'Arley calls a "serious proposition," and a strike by Government employees is so serious that it should be regarded as unthinkable, because in such a case the right of appeal always lies to public opinion which may be trusted, by the exercise of that rough sense of justice which certainly animates humankind, to act fairly as between the State and the public servant. On another point the view expressed by Mr M'Arley can only be accepted with some reservation. "The dispute of the A.5.R.5.," he says, "is not beyond hope, as no final word has been given by the Government." There should be no final word by the Government until the contest to whish the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants seems bent on challenging it has been terminated. Mr Mnck and his friends have not asked for & 'iinal word." In the face of the

threat, of direct action the Government will exhibit a pusillanimous spirit if it seeks to parley with the railwaymen. The authority of the State must first be asserted. When that has been done, the Government may consider overtures from Mr Mack, and it will do so in circumstances that will, it may be hoped, enable it to reduce the railway service, which is at present overmanned, to proportions suited to the requirements of the public.